Posts by Anthony 13

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Re: Why not?

Electronic IS totally different. It's not a physical thing they are looking for that you might have in your briefcase, be it a weapon or drugs or whatever - it's all about data. I'd bet you be none to pleased if some jobsbody got your private diary out of your briefcase, brewed up a pot of coffee, pulled up a chair and started reading through your life for the next 12 hours. That sort of intrusion is the exact sort of thing you would expect would require a warrant.

I admit my total ignorance in the law on this (where such a thing may exist), but I'd hoped we were at least living in a world where most people would consider this sort of action as just fundamentally wrong!

They already recorded an entire EP ...

Don't get the hate here...

... the only interest group that has any real power to influence executive salaries are shareholders. And usually the only key group of shareholders that, together, can garner much voting power, are the fund managers (holding *our* cash). Individually, the fund providers will only ever have a tiny bit of ownership of these massive entities, but it is in our interests for them to try to work together and get cash out of the executive and put it back in the shareholders hands (i.e. ultimately us).

Like it or not, the only way to change executive pay / poor decision making is to get more pro-active "shareholder activist" fund managers...

And how many "pay wave" style plastic cards ...

... are there that have been distributed and never 'waved'? Half the time I try to use one of those, the vendor has a machine but it isn't enabled! If a plastic card rarely works, who is going to bother trying with their phones?

So I can understand why you are are picking on NFC, but I'm not quite so sure why you using Apple as an example - I would have thought a 10% adoption rate for something relatively newfangled would actually be considered a reasonable success. And that % must be higher if you take into account regions where Apple Pay is not an option...

Re: Simples...

Yes to cash, not so sure about that pre-pay card - I believe hotels typically pre-block* a chunk of money on the card - and if it is pre-paid card that's your cash they've theoretically got their hands on! Case in point, friend was recently travelling with a pre-paid card with relevant foreign currency on it - went to a swish hotel and they kept that block on the card long after he had checked out...he was then forced to use a card with a much less favourable exchange rate for everything else.

How do you ever know???? My WHS (Server 2008 R2) bricked itself too - I saw it was waiting for an update - BOOM - wouldn't boot the next day... oh crap. Coincidence? I don't know - I'm too incompetent to work it out - I guess it serves me right for keep putting off the backup of the OS drive...

Re: Got a letter on Monday

I often thought their business suggestions were odd to say the least, but thought that this was a feature for the US market where they might make a bit more effort with their data - nice to know there is clearly no point sending corrections in...

I have noticed and reported a couple of application issues - never hear back, but they have got them fixed over time:

- no tube station showing up at Liverpool St.

- the negative 0 latitude longitude bug in some versions (i.e. entering -0.02 would take you 0.02 degrees East of Greenwich)

- auto-suggest comes up with a station icon, but when picked is often some distance from the station

If I have spotted these, I can only imagine there must be heaps of other bugs across all the different versions, let alone the mapping data itself ...

Re: Not my GMail password

"We found that less than 2% of the username and password combinations might have worked, and our automated anti-hijacking systems would have blocked many of those login attempts. We’ve protected the affected accounts and have required those users to reset their passwords."

How do these thing save money?

Serious question, how will these things save anybody any money? They consume energy themselves, so if anything, my bill would microscopically go up. If you want to save money, don't use electricity/gas, right?

Re: Lack of integrated email/contacts/calendar?

"And even if there really isn't anything suitable, paying someone to write software, or tweak existing software would be far cheaper than paying for MS licenses, and the hardware upgrades the monster would require."

That is one of the funniest things I have ever heard!!! Jamie, I can only assume you are a software developer with self interest at heart?

Re: let me guess...

I agree Pavlov - as a white middle aged male (thankfully not too old yet) - I am sick of it too. Sadly, I don't have answers on how to fix it though - all I know is it will take a long time. As you say, affirmative action may not be ideal, but at least it's something.

To be fair to others (and I don't think you deny this), "the best person for the job" is not a bad ideal - but there needs to be a realisation from people that although you didn't get hired "because you were a white guy", you were probably picked from a bunch of white guys because most non-white non-guys never got the same opportunities / treatment over the long haul. I suspect that may not be a popular view here, however...

A bit of transparency would be good...

... surely the carriers / MVNOs could be forced to be a bit more open about what the agreements are - the consumers should know what they are getting - do they sit in a 'tier' on the network and what tier it is. Then the consumer can make the decision as to whether we want to pay to be in 'higher' tiers - be it PAYG or contract, home carrier or MVNO.

There are clearly people stating tiers don't exist, but all I can say from my own personal experience with O2 PAYG (my usage being light data - browsing, etc.) - in the same locations: O2 was OK, giffgaff was consistently poor (almost unusable) and Tesco has been OK as well. Others will no doubt say the opposite, but the networks should tell us what is going on.

Ummm ... read the article?

"Such a refusal would simply force the complainant to take their gripe to their national data protection authority – such as the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) in the UK – and any decision taken at that level can be fought over in the courts."

I.E. Assuming Google refused the ICO request, ultimately a court could order the information be removed. Without the law, you could never get that far ...

@Old Handle

Thanks - yes, I was thinking it might be a hashing issue - though if encrypted and then hashed it must protect those simple passwords some more. I guess my own feeling is that a somewhat complex string of memorable words is still a safer bet for most people than storing a bunch of super duper complex forgettable passwords - but I am (clearly) no expert.

Someone please enlighten me...

... what exactly does a 'strong' password (as defined here) protect you from? This is a serious question - I just don't understand this "password long, symbols, numbers not a word" mantra. It just forces the user to write things down, store it elsewhere, reset it all of the time, etc.

- If the password isn't encrypted, it doesn't matter how complex it is.

- If the password is able to be decrypted, it doesn't matter how complex it is.

- If your encryption model depends on 'everyone' having an equally strong password - good luck with that - it won't matter how complex yours is.

- If there is a key logger (video camera, machine compromised, whatever), it doesn't matter how complex it is.

- If you are successfully phished, it doesn't matter how complex it is.

- If you are re-using a compromised password, it doesn't matter how complex it is.

- If someone is attempting a dictionary attack on your account, the security model 'should' stop the attack well before it can 'guess' the password, so it 'shouldn't' matter how complex it is.

- Further to this, if someone is simply guessing your password, the above should also kick in - the 'obvious' password examples given aren't anymore obvious than a thousand other things...

Why no naked broadband in the UK?

Re: Home server/NAS

WHS has always been (still is) available as an OEM license, which an individual (system re-purposer) can use .... as the OEM you have to support yourself though. I suspect most people inclined to build their own server are more likely to run Linux.

The one advantage WHS does (did) have is the built-in backup and bare metal restore for Windows clients. It seems crazy, but I haven't seen anything really equivalent on a NAS device or Linux platform - unless anyone else has?

The other advantage it has for me - the machine makes a great PVR and HTPC (Media Portal) client. NAS and Linux do offer options in this area though.

Re: "iPhones, iPads, Android gear and Windows Phone"

You got that right - lucky I read this, at least now I'll know why my Skype phone won't be working when I try to call friends and family come Christmas time. It's a shame - it was handy to have one 'normal' phone that could do both POTS and Skype.

Controversy?

Surely some context would be useful here for the non-Ossies? Ongoing leadership bunfight between Gillard and Rudd in the labor party; Opposition attempting to capitalise. I don't know if I would consider these lame political games controversial.

Wrong demographic?

Don't worry, you are in the El Reg demographic i.e. People who insist on posting about things they know nothing about.. But you did do it without personal abuse ... So maybe you don't really belong ...

Phone jibe bad ...

... but generally I agree as well.

People need to make some sacrifices, but let's face it - most companies will not make any effort at all if they don't have to, and it saves them a fiver. A good analogy would be sky dishes - in many cases they could be more discreetly installed with a bit of effort, but do you think the sky installer is interested in that ...

Shame there isn't a double fail icon ...

The OP was talking about New Scienctist and Nature, not the BBC. And although one could argue these are not the most hardcore scientific journals they are a damn site more scientific than "El Reg", whose predertimined bias is clear for anyone to see. Strangely you don't even realise that in your analogy the El Reg editorial policy is equivalent to only letting the homeopathy guy, flat earth guy and Nick Griffin speak.

And I don't know whether to laugh or cry when I read so much "pseudo-science" baloney from posters who have absolutely no background in the area (or any scientific area it appears); yet are still determined to prove climate change is all untrue with some stupid analagy (tidal wave guy I'm looking at you). Kudus to the people who do try to argue clearly and succinctly, but you are fighting a battle that has already been lost.

Huh? As the article says ...

... it is against Australian Consumer law to do what they did i.e. force the customer into buying a bundle of products. Perhaps people are prepared to pay "too much" for a supposed lifestyle product - but they weren't complaining about that, they were complaining about having to buy the superflous crap. Overall this has absolutely nothing to do with the supply and demand price argument you are babbling about.

Finally, I should note, JB Hi-Fi are not really comparable to Currys or Dixons - they are mostly noted for selling a vast variety of CDs at relatively cheap prices. At some point they moved into the stack-em-high mid-range AV electricals market. I have always thought their numbers just didn't add up, but somehow they just keep growing - perhaps it just shows how much people have been paying over the odds for music (and AV) all this time (and how limited Internet shopping in Australia is - if you are curious as to why; think about the cost of delivery ...).

Totally agree with the general vibe from the commentards here ...

... but my question is are these all the same commentards who also comment bitterly about not being able to thieve - I mean torrent - movies and music with impunity? If not, where are they ... surely they should be arguing how this should be fine fine fine?

wtf ... wtf ...

Where is the el reg worst analogy icon? I think you might find people playing those sports are still getting being paid (quite handsomly) without having to sink half court shots, hit field goals etc. etc. Of course that might all change if they are getting the chance to win stuffed dinosaur ... now that's something I'd like to see!

Real World Performance?

A synthetic showing "close" performance to an SSD? Did the testing involve allowing the drive to optimise for a particular test? What would performance be like after a few months of use and a user who randomly uses quite a few applications ... what is the performance in this situation?

Hey, I really hope they work as well as they say they do, but just not sure this proves they do (4gb is pretty small). At the moment the suggestion to have an SSD program drive and a HD data drive sounds the ticket, but that is still a very expensive option for the desktop.

Now it WOULD be funny ...

Re: False Dichotomy

Yes he missed the point about neither being Open Source, but so have many previous posters.

And leaving aside this particular example of paying for a terminal emulator, surely the issue is that vertical / bespoke / custom software is never going to be written or supported by Open Source communities. The best "the zealot" can hope for is that such software will be developed on an Open Source *platform*.

Where does this mad assumption that FOSS exists for every SW need come from? Do they not realise that business requirements for SW extend beyound Office (and terminal emulators)? I really am fascinated as to how people (like the first poster) come to these conclusions ...